dual boot problem

[a-guest-user]

a desktop pc with 2 hard drives: hard drive 1 has WIN 2000 installed on it, then I installed Ubuntu 8.04 on the second hard drive. Both hard drives are SATA Samsung 160 GB.

The installation worked fine, on restart the Grub boot loader appears, offering to boot into both systems. When I choose Ubuntu, this error is displayed:

Error 17: cannot mount selected partition
When choosing WIN 2000, it says:

Error 13: invalid or unsupported executable format

I assume this is a Grub problem, so here is the /boot/grub/menu.lst:

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=4d6a8dda-8735-421e-9f56-f97a9bda5ee8 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=4d6a8dda-8735-421e-9f56-f97a9bda5ee8 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, memtest86+
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1

And the /etc/fstab:

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sdb1
UUID=4d6a8dda-8735-421e-9f56-f97a9bda5ee8 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sdb5
UUID=e1b8bdf1-2041-46a1-99ec-76016ea66235 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

I don't have much of a clue as to what I can do, so I'd appreciate any help. thanks.

[cdtech]

Whats the output of "sudo fdisk -l"

[cdtech]

You'll want to make sure your BIOS is set correctly for SATA drives as well.

[a-guest-user]

fdisk -l says:

Platte /dev/sda: 160.0 GByte, 160041885696 Byte
255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 19457 Zylinder
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd84739a3

Gerät boot. Anfang Ende Blöcke Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 5099 40957686 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 5100 16708 93249292+ f W95 Erw. (LBA)
/dev/sda5 5100 16708 93249261 7 HPFS/NTFS

Platte /dev/sdb: 160.0 GByte, 160041885696 Byte
255 Köpfe, 63 Sektoren/Spuren, 19457 Zylinder
Einheiten = Zylinder von 16065 × 512 = 8225280 Bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0004b6f7

Gerät boot. Anfang Ende Blöcke Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 19293 154970991 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 19294 19457 1317330 5 Erweiterte
/dev/sdb5 19294 19457 1317298+ 82 Linux Swap / Solaris

When booting with the live cd, it takes quite long (more than 5 minutes), and a message appears saying:

ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct [sth else here] frozen
The message appears 3 times, then Ubuntu seems to boot normal.

How would I have to set up the Bios for SATA disks?

[cdtech]

I'm not really sure which board you have. Normally it would be in the boot order section I would think..

[a-guest-user]

any hint as to what I should look for? if in BIOS I select the WIN disk to be booted from, it works fine, WIN2000 starts without problems, so I'm not sure it really is a BIOS problem.

the boot loader is on the Linux disk.

any other ideas?

[logos34]

if in BIOS I select the WIN disk to be booted from, it works fine, WIN2000 starts without problems, so I'm not sure it really is a BIOS problem.

the boot loader is on the Linux disk.


When the grub menu screen comes up press 'e' to edit the ubuntu kernel. 'e' again on the 'root' line and change to (hd0,0). 'enter' and 'b' to boot.

Once inside ubuntu make the change permanent:

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

--change 'root' lines and 'groot' (near the top) to match.

Your windows entry should look exactly like this (http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p15.htm#Windows_on_a_non-first_hard_disk).

[a-guest-user]

thanks, that has partially helped. I also found this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/206635

So I changed the boot line to hd0,0 and added irqpoll all_generic_ide to the kernel line.

It now starts booting, but doesn't get until the actual OS. the error "ata4.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)" and several other lines are displayed, repeated, and eventually it stops booting, ending with a line (initfams) or similar.

Any ideas? It seems Ubuntu has trouble with the SATA disks.